Based on our recently proposed magnon-density-waves using the microscopic many- body approach, we investigate the longitudinal excitations in quantum antiferromagnets by including the second order corrections in the large-s expansion. The longitudinal excitation spectra for a general spin quantum number using the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg Hamiltonian are obtained for various spin lattice models. For bipartite lattice models, we find that the numerical results for the energy gaps for the longitudinal modes at q → 0 and the magnetic ordering wavevector Q are reduced by about 40-50 % after including the second order corrections. Thus, our estimate of the energy gaps for the quasi-one-dimensional (quasi- 1D) antiferromagnetic compound KCuF 3 is in better agreement with the experimental result. For the quasi-1D antiferromagnets on hexagonal lattices, the full excitation spectra of both the transverse modes (i.e., magnons) and the longitudinal modes are obtained as functions of the nearest-neighbor coupling and the anisotropy constants. We find two longitudinal modes due to the non-collinear nature of the triangular antiferromagnetic order, similar to that of the phenomenological field theory approach by Affleck. We compare our results for the longitudinal energy gaps at the magnetic wavevectors with the experimental results for several antiferromagnetic compounds with both integer and non-integer spin quantum numbers, and also find good agreement after the higher-order contributions are included in our calculations.
We investigate the excited states of the quasi-one-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets on hexagonal lattices, including the longitudinal modes based on the magnon-density waves. A model Hamiltonian with a uniaxial single-ion anisotropy is first studied by a spin wave theory based on the one-boson method; the ground state thus obtained is employed for the study of the longitudinal modes. The full energy spectra of both the transverse modes (i.e., magnons) and the longitudinal modes are obtained as functions of the nearest-neighbor coupling and the anisotropy constants. We have found two longitudinal modes due to the noncollinear nature of the triangular antiferromagnetic order, similar to that of the phenomenological field theory approach by Affleck. The excitation energy gaps due to the anisotropy and the energy gaps of the longitudinal modes without anisotropy are then investigated. We then compare our results for the longitudinal energy gaps at the magnetic wave vectors with the experimental results for several antiferromagnetic compounds with both integer and noninteger spin quantum numbers, and we find good agreement after the higher-order contributions are included in our calculations.
By extending our recently proposed magnon-density waves to low dimensions, we investigate, using a microscopic many-body approach, the longitudinal excitations of the quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1d) and quasi-2d Heisenberg antiferromagnetic systems on a bipartite lattice with a general spin quantum number. We obtain the full energy spectrum of the longitudinal mode as a function of the coupling constants in the original lattice Hamiltonian and find that it always has a nonzero energy gap if the ground state has a long-range order and becomes gapless for the pure isotropic 1d model. The numerical value of the minimum gap in our approximation agrees with that of a longitudinal mode observed in the quasi-1d antiferromagnetic compound KCuF3 at low temperature. It will be interesting to compare values of the energy spectrum at other momenta if their experimental results are available.
The coupled-cluster method is applied to the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic XXZ model on a square lattice by employing an approximation which contains two-body long-range correlations and high-order four-body local correlations. Improvement is found for the ground-state energy, the sublattice magnetization and the critical anisotropy when comparing with the approximation including the two-body correlations alone. We also obtain the full excitation spectrum which is in good agreement with the quantum Monte Carlo results and the high-order spin-wave theory.
This thesis investigates two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnets, with a focus on the spin-
21 antiferromagnetic easy-axis XXZ model on a square and a honeycomb lattice. Describing the excitations and interactions of magnons in these models is of substantial interest, as magnons are the fundamental quasiparticles and can thus explain experimental observations. Already for the paradigmatic antiferromagnetic spin-
21 Heisenberg model on the square lattice, high-energy features of the magnon dispersion are understood via strong magnon-magnon interactions. Besides that, interesting high-energy features were recently observed in the honeycomb lattice, including a possible decay of the single-magnon mode. The goal of this thesis is to obtain effective descriptions of the aforementioned systems that capture the relevant features of the magnon excitations and their interactions. To study these features, this thesis employs continuous similarity transformations (CSTs), which enables a systematic derivation of an effective quasiparticle picture via so-called flow equations. The approach enables decoupling different magnon sectors and thus for investigating ground-state properties, single-magnon excitations, and multi-magnon bound states. The magnon description is derived from the non-Hermitian Dyson-Maleev representation, which describes fluctuations around a long-range magnetically ordered ground state. The flow equations are set up in momentum space, truncated by the scaling dimension, retaining only operators up to scaling dimension of two, and solved numerically. For the square lattice, a magnon-conserving effective Hamiltonian is obtained across the full anisotropy range by interpolating between the Ising limit and the Heisenberg limit. The ground-state energy, staggered magnetization, dispersion, and critical exponents are in excellent agreement with the literature, supporting the validity of CST also for gapped phases. Two-magnon excitations in the
Sz=0 subspace comprise four bound states, which are tracked across the anisotropy range. Their successive decay into the two-magnon continuum is determined by using the inverse participation ratio. For the honeycomb lattice, the magnon-conserving CST is reliable only up to
λ≲0.57; an adapted CST scheme that decouples only the ground state while preserving couplings between different higher-magnon sectors yields effective descriptions for all
λ and confirms stable long-range order. The low-energy properties determined in this way match the literature values. However, in the Heisenberg limit, the adapted approach fails to capture high-energy features, such as the experimentally observed decay into the multi-particle continuum at corners of the Brillouin zone. A termination of the magnon-conserving flow equations at a finite flow parameter before the divergence reveals a single-magnon decay at high energies, which is connected to a crossing of a two-magnon bound state with the single-magnon mode. The observed energy dip qualitatively agrees with Quantum Monte Carlo results, but magnon–magnon interactions are overestimated, hindering a fully quantitative characterization of the single-magnon dispersion. Analyzing multi-magnon bound states over the anisotropy range unveils that the crossing of a three-magnon bound state with the single-magnon mode accounts for the breakdown of the magnon-conserving CST at higher
λ. This work demonstrates that CST with scaling-dimension truncation provides a powerful framework for studying two-dimensional quantum magnets, capturing low-energy properties and bound states. Nevertheless, challenges remain in accurately describing high-energy features arising from a persistent overlap of magnon sectors due to strong binding effects.
A key feature of the newly discovered altermagnet is that its spin degeneracy is lifted, although it has an antiferromagnetic order and zero net magnetization. In this work, we investigate a frustrated spin-1/2
J1-
J2-
δ Heisenberg model on the square lattice by the tensor network methodin combination with the linear spin-wave theory, with our focus on both the magnon excitations and longitudinal excitations.For a small
J2 and a finite range of
δ we demonstrate that such a model hosts an altermagnetic ground state. Its magnon spectrum is split into two branches and the largest splitting occurs at
(±π/2,±π/2) in the Brillouin zone. The magnitudes of splitting in the two magnon modes are equal with respect to the case of
δ=0. Dynamical spin structure factors show that the low-energy peak in the longitudinal spectral weight around
(π/2,π/2) is also split, and thus the relative positions of the magnon modes and longitudinal modes in energy may change in the presence of a finite
δ. These findings demonstrate that the altermagnets harbor more complex quantum dynamics than the conventional collinear antiferromagnets.